Hands Dipped in Blood
by Abi2
Summary: Heero reflects on himself and the other pilots.


Heero looked at them with cold blue eyes. It wasn't that he didn't feel anything. No. It was that he didn't know that he was feeling anything at all.

They all, at one time or another, became sad or angry.

They smiled, they frowned.

So did he.

But sometimes he just had to wonder. Why did they? He only smiled when he knew that he had done the best job. He would smile when he had to act the part of the stoic bad-ass bastard.

That was Duo's name for him...He wasn't sure if it was just a joke really... Or if Duo really thought that about him.

He figured though, that he and the pilot with the braid would have the most in common.

Not the things like growing up or favorite foods or anything.

But in their abilities, their personalities, their feelings.

They were both excellent stealth operatives, and were both very knowledgeable about explosives and guns.

(He chalked it up to J and G being the closest of the scientists. As he recalled, G would visit him every now and again. And they thought that they were fooling him... Ha.)

And as far as Heero could tell, they were both rather apathetic when it came to killing.

The others may jokingly (or maybe not very jokingly, he wasn't always sure) say that he had had the humanity trained out of him. That wasn't the truth. The truth was that J had found him and trained him. Had taken in a psychotic little boy and put him to good use. He was a tool, a weapon.

He created death, and he felt nothing.

There was no guilt, there was no anguish.

It was just a body.

Just blood.

Water, carbon, iron, all those elements.

A human is only one step away from an inanimate object, and the only obstacle was that pesky life.

He wasn't sure what exactly a "life" was, because there was no real scientific explanation for it.

Killing a human was insanely easy. All you had to do is take an important function in the body and remove it.

Shoot them in the head, and the brain cannot continue to regulate the body, thus creating death.

The heart means no blood pumping through the body.

Sever an artery and you force blood out of the system faster than it can be replaced.

It was so simple.

And of all of the pilots, he thought that Duo would understand.

Maybe he wasn't psychotic like Heero was.

(And yes, he knew he was clinically proven to be psychotic. It was okay with him.)

Duo had that gleam when he killed. He took pleasure in eradicating life from someone.

Or maybe he just hid that pain that was supposed to be there...Maybe he was just a better actor than Heero gave him credit for.

And as for the suicidal tendencies he displayed... he was just another body right? He would die someday, so what was the problem in going the way you wanted to? It was all in the perspective.

Heero continued to watch the four pilots interact, talking and horsing around. His observations of them varied from day to day. It was rare to actually interact with all of them together. They were usually solo or in pairs.

Quatre was so positive, so open. However, his mind was always analyzing the situation, always working through one problem to the next. One day he was going to analyze himself to death, or at least make himself nuts. He wasn't really soldier material. He had the mind of a general, not an infantryman.

Trowa... Well, he was quiet, but he could be talkative too. He was a master infiltrator, someone who had no identity could easily pick up someone else's. He had remorse, and he would not last long after the war if he didn't find someone to help him. It would be easy for someone who had lived all their life in a military service of some sort to think that their time was over when there was no use for them. Heero knew this very well, and sometimes thought about his usefulness later on...

WuFei was a mystery... He was a man(boy?) of many moods. He was fixated on this "justice" thing. What is justice really? It's another perspective issue. What if justice to Heero was an eye for an eye, but to WuFei it was monetary retribution? Justice wasn't an answer. It was an excuse. But so what? He would find out sooner or later that he needed to stop trying so hard to find a reason for the blood lust he held, and just to embrace the killer within.

It was surprisingly easy.

Duo...

A real enigma. Grew up with death and poverty. He was accustomed to the rules of life, things like survival of the best, and death to those who can not fight for themselves.

Or at least, that was the way Heero saw it. He could see in Duo someone like himself. Someone not afraid of death, not afraid to kill. Someone who felt no pain, no anguish in the face of death and destruction.

Or maybe he just wanted to project himself onto Duo because he felt the closest connection with the braided pilot.

Whatever it was, he wanted to find out more.

But the only way to do that was to communicate. Heero wasn't a great communicator, in fact he was a shitty communicator. He could communicate things like "move and die," or "get out of here now or die". Mostly threats actually...

But he didn't want the pilots to know about his... mental insufficiencies... so to speak.

He didn't want them to know that what they thought he was was what he really was. A person without feelings (of remorse or guilt. He felt pleasure, he felt pain.)

Heero sighed, and stood up. There was only one way to find out if Duo was really a kindred spirit.

"Duo..."

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This came out worse than I expected. I know exactly what I fell this piece should be, but I can't seem to get it right. This is what I'm posting though, so oh well.

To me, Heero (and to an extent Duo) is really "the perfect soldier". He feels things, because a soldier should be able to grant mercy, and to make informed decisions about things other than just on the battlefield. But I see it as not so much J training the humanity out of him, as teaching him how to harness his psychosis.

He feels no remorse, because he doesn't understand what it is. He doesn't know why killing a person should be such a crime, because to him, a human is simply a body with animation. And he doesn't care that they have lives, and that there are people who love them and such. He simply understands that they are expendable. As is himself.

I think I'm confusing everyone (even me) so I'll give it up.

Review or don't.

I'd love to hear your take on this story, but if you don't care enough to comment, then so be it.

Have a nice day.


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